Non-government institutions accounted for 86% of Ayurveda and 85% of homoeopathy colleges in 2024, according to government data, showing that the private sector is leading the AYUSH medical education infrastructure’s rapid expansion. Permitted seats also rose by 43% and total admission capacity by 25% between 2021 and 2024, when the Centre’s AYURGYAN allocation for AYUSH education, training, research, innovation and capacity-building, increased nearly sixfold. While similar concerns vis-à-vis allopathic medical education have been confined to whether institutions adequately prepare students for evidence-based practice, the questions of the AYUSH systems are about the quality of training and what students are being trained to practise. Given the combination, it is notable that quality issues in India’s AYUSH system long predate the current boom. In a 2005 audit, the Comptroller and Auditor General found insufficient hospital beds, outpatient services, and/or staff widespread among homoeopathy colleges, with bed occupancy from 1% to 71%. A 2020 Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine article similarly reported that many institutions had a shortfall exceeding 50% in the teaching staff required by standards then. The regulator, the National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM), has often withheld or denied permission to institutions after inspections have found gaps in faculty strength and infrastructure.
While this shows a working regulatory system, the expansion led by the private sector is of additional concern as it is accompanied by incentives for these institutions to maximise student intake while maintaining faculty size and laboratory infrastructure. As of August 21, the NCISM had listed 17 Ayurveda colleges — all private — whose permissions it had denied, several for “non-compliance with inspection process”. In Hillside Ayurveda Medical College (2023), the Karnataka High Court acknowledged that “often educational institutions are … guilty of admitting excess students for financial gains”. The National Commission for Homoeopathy has given 41% of all homoeopathy colleges the lowest grade, including nearly half of all private institutions. Effectively, the expansion of AYUSH education is amid persistent quality issues, including inadequate or disputed faculty strengths, failures in inspection requirements and student intake numbers, and even allegations of fictitious faculty. While it would be premature to infer that the rapid expansion evident will have amplified these problems, the persistent regulatory non-compliance warrants tougher quality control and a reexamination of the incentives for private institutions, together with questions about the evidence backing AYUSH medicinal systems.
